Wicked huge anti-fascist march in Boston: Today in tweets

How you can tell this anti-fascist march is in Boston (Modified pic from @JackSmithIV)

By David Futrelle

So the Nazis and their pals had a “free speech” rally in Boston Common that drew … several dozen people. They were met by TWENTY THOUSAND antifascist counterprotesters. You go, Boston!

Also, Steve Bannon got canned at the White House and has returned to Breitbart to launch a “war” against the White House, but that was yesterday and you already know that. But hey, it’s still fun to joke about.

This is how these protests should be handled. Keep the white supremacists and the counter-protesters apart from each other, let them compete with numbers, and see the white supremacists get trounced. There were a few scuffles with police, apparently, but nothing serious.

The Monstrosity, of course, seizes on the scuffles. “Looks like many anti-police agitators in Boston.” Slime.

Also: I wondered why Alex Jones would ever go to downtown Seattle. It’s like the Mouth of Sauron walking into Minas Tirith. If he went there just to have a fake fight, that would explain it.

Also, for any crafty Mammotheers, I just discovered the Welcome Blanket Project. They are collecting blankets for immigrants who have recently arrived in the US. The blankets will all be on display in Chicago for a short time before the are sent to the recipients. I only found out today because they have extended the submission deadline. I’ve started planning a quilt to submit.

I wish there was more I could do to help with these protests besides looking at articles and sharing them, but I’m a mentally ill queer person with a job, a college career, and a not-as-radical family. I’m considering setting aside some money for some Muslim friends of mine in case something bad happens, but I only earn $8.66/hr for 4-8 hours a week. I wish I knew what I could do.

IIRC, Posobeic was one of the guy that started the “hillary killed Seth Rich as revenge for WikiLeaks”. He’s probably trying to get a new break to not become just a one hit wonder hack like that James O’Keefe kid became.

@JS

That’s the worst Photoshop I’ve ever seen. Nothing had been changed at all!

Does anyone have that Resistibot text thing handy? I’d like to do more with the resisting stuff, but I have almost literally no money to spare for donations, I’m fairly busy with doing all this stuff the unemployment office wants me to do to keep getting money from them (plus job search in general), and while I’m fairly good as a photojournalist, no-one resistance-wise in my area has call for such skills. (That I know of, anyway.)

I’m pretty sure that sign with crossed-off Trump staff is a takeoff on lists one sees in sports-oriented Massachusetts establishments, with crossed-off names of Red Sox personnel who have moved to other teams. Unless Nomar Garciaparra has been assassinated, I really don’t think it’s a threat.

I guess I fell for that fake Alex Jones encounter because I thought why would he WANT to look like a coward? But then again, he probably doesn’t think of it like that. He thinks swearing and running up to random people makes him look tough somehow, and the coffee thing makes a martyr out of him.

The Confederate cosplay comment got me wondering. Civil War reenactments and reenactors are a decently big business in the US. Enough people do those that a movie company wanting to shoot a Civil War epic could just call up these guys if they want a ton of authenticly dressed extras.

Should the reenactors be discouraged from doing them anymore, or at least for the time being? Based on the few I’ve met (Northern reenactors, anyway), they seem to be there to celebrate history, not make a comment on the current political scene. These are guys who go to great lengths to figure out things like what and how the original soldiers ate, then recreate it while ‘in costume’.

Which doesn’t mean some of the Nazis haven’t joined some of the reenactment clubs, of course. Just that those groups were supposed to be historical in nature, not political.

I think that the Confederate side of history isn’t a thing to be celebrated at all. Someone has to play the Confederates if we’re re-enacting the civil war, but that shouldn’t be a thing people choose.

However…I’ve never heard of a WWII re-enactment that involves folks playing nazis. Even modern video games don’t assign players as “nazis” or has authentic insignia on assets normally used by the Nazis. Empire Earth steps around the issue entirely by not addressing the Nazi party at all during its modern Germany campaign and instead framing the second world war in terms of a response to the first.

I’m not saying that gaming has addressed the Nazis or the 2nd World War appropriately at all, because it hasn’t – anything less than “The Nazis were horrible inhuman monsters and no one ever had any excuse for supporting them” is a failure of a game that involves WWII.

Honestly, passion for history or not, the Confederacy should have the same cultural and legal prohibitions from showing its ideals and insignias as Nazis do. Because fundamentally speaking, the Confederates and the Nazis have the same ideals. Just slightly different end goals.

In U.S. alone, by the end of the 1990s there were 20 Waffen-SS reenactment groups, out of approximately 40 groups dedicated to German World War II units. In contrast, there were 21 groups dedicated to the American units of the same timeframe

When I was a kid it was a big treat to go to a place called Peasolm Park in Scarborough. They do reenactments of naval battles on the boating lake using these 30 foot models of the warships. This actually dates back to just after WW1. But the tradition continues to this day. The reenactments were always based on Royal Navy victories, but latterly it was decided that wasn’t very nice for German tourists, so now they’re just generic battles between two unnamed forces (That just happen to exactly replicate the WW2 battles)

Well that’s fucking depressing. Both of these things need to be stopped. Ugh

^Yep *sighs*

You are what you pretend to be, so be careful what you pretend to be
-Vonnegut

I don’t think especially highly of war reenactment generally. Just not comfortable with it. But when you choose to reenact the roles of slavers and genociders in wars about the morality of slavery and genocide, discomfort grows to suspicion, and I’ll be forgiven for giving such people very little benefit of doubt as far as their actual, OOC opinion of me…

Yay, Boston! Good to see some positive news, and I agree with D that this is a good way to do it.

@Redsilkphoenix
I can definitely see the concern under present circumstances, and have never really felt comfortable with the idea of reenactments of relatively recent history, but in my experience and from my dad’s accounts of attending them (including with old soldiers, which sounded weird as heck to me, but they liked seeing it apparently), the reenactors have just been harmlessly obsessive history geeks. They were just interested in the nitty gritty details and understanding what it was like and stuff, not in celebrating Nazis or anything. I can kind of understand I guess, it’s possible to be interested in/like some things you feel you maybe shouldn’t, from a more detached perspective – I’ve often felt it’s a bit weird and contradictory that I’m deeply anti-war yet instantly fascinated by medieval battle and swords ‘n stuff. I suppose the potential risk of being drawn in by the idea of (sanitised, necessarily) violence might be a reason to avoid reenactments, itself. : /

@ Alan
I remember seeing those as a kid! Peaseholme Park was always on the list of laces to visit when we crossed the River to go to Scarborough. I’m actually going to Scarborough in three weeks for the PF North conference so I might see if I can squeeze in a visit to the park.

The Seattle coffee-thrower wasn’t a “crisis actor”. He’s apparently a local heavy metal singer involved in the “amateur wrestling” scene and there are multiple tweets confirming he’s a well-known weirdo who would absolutely dump lukewarm coffee on Alex Jones for the lulz.

I don’t think especially highly of war reenactment generally. Just not comfortable with it. But when you choose to reenact the roles of slavers and genociders in wars about the morality of slavery and genocide, discomfort grows to suspicion, and I’ll be forgiven for giving such people very little benefit of doubt as far as their actual, OOC opinion of me…

Yeah, I think it’s pretty context specific. Speaking of my experiences seeing both the Citadel in Halifax and the Fortress of Louisbourg historic sites, I can see where reenactors can be appropriate. Both are organized and maintained by Parks Canada and have costumed actors in military attire posted as sentries and tour guides. I don’t see a lot of issues with Parks Canada employees cosplaying as a member of 78th Highlanders or a French sentry guard to greet tourists or demonstrate foot drills.

Actually reenacting battles, that’s a different story. IIRC, some of the War of 1812 battles were also re-enacted for the 200th anniversary. Being a militaria dork, I would actually find a viewing of a reenactment rather educational, but if you’re one of those guys who actually identifies with the Axis or the Confederacy, that’s where the problems lie, and I’m sure plenty of their reenactors do.

Military stuff. I used to enjoy the history of it all. Dude friends of course we all about “ahmigah look at how cool this tank is” and whatnot, which I always sort of rolled my eyes at. These days I narrow my eyes a bit at people who obsess over the details of military history without having a similar interest in the context of those conflicts. Fetishization of war, etc. It’s a common thing up here, and – well, I don’t think I need to explain why that makes me uncomfortable.

I’ve seen some excellent reenactment, but the absolute best was always the reenactment of the camps, the lives of soldiers on the march, etc. Almost universally poor people being dragged into these huge conflicts, facing death all around them, often with little more than a pair of boots, a bag of flour and a ratty blanket for comfort and survival. Being forced to fight through circumstances outside of their control, making do with what they could find or salvage. Terrible and inspiring in equal measure. That sort of reenactment I am entirely behind.

Battle reenactment, though? Gimme a foam axe and shield, and let me bonk some padding-swathed Normans. They’re just SCA enthusiasts without the sense of fun. Take themselves waaaaay too seriously.

As for the fucking Nazi-reenactment-enthusiasts? I’ve known for years that those jackoffs were serious. There’s a huge crossover between them and the dudes that enjoy military engineering for the “woah look at that cool tank” factor. They love powerful war machines, decisive and heartless decisions from military commanders (the more heartless the better, cause it just shows off how dedicated they are to their cause), and snappy uniforms that look impressive. They don’t process that those war machines destroy lives, those heartless decisions are needlessly brutal, and those snappy uniforms are meaningless. It’s all about the spectacle, the show of force.

The clouds did part for just long enough to view the peak! Then they started coming back and the cloud cover was thin enough to see the sun through it but thick enough that I was able to look directly at it and see the 83% eclipse without glasses. Yay!

We Hunted the Mammoth tracks and mocks the white male rage underlying the rise of Trump and Trumpism. This blog is NOT a safe space; given the subject matter -- misogyny and hate -- there's really no way it could be.